How to do intricate line art like on dollar bills and certificates?

[ylustrata]

Need help in doing those intricate pattern designs like those on currency (dollar bills etc) and certificate borders etc.

 

[jimoblak]

Create a brush or try a blend.

 

[halong]

Aonther way to handle this is scan in an image that has a patter you are looking for, as a black and white line art, and bring it into Streamline, convert art wrok and then bring it into Illustrator. You then can use this as your template.

 

[askIllustrator]

You'll find there are alot of fonts out there that are nothing but deco art. There are alot of groovy ones out there for free so you may find what you need right there. These are also easy to create in Fontographer from Macromedia. I had a series of designs to once that had 4 completly different feels to them. I simply made a font with all the sytles in it (about 20 characters total) and used illustrator find and replace command to change out the patterns for each feel. Really saved alot of time. BEHOLD! As Steve Jobs introduces us the latest in desk-lamp technology!

http://www.apple.com

 

[ylustrata]

What I was getting at is the CREATION of those intricate designs on currency etc. I remember reading somewhere that they are created by a lathe because no human could actually trace the design. I have made brushes. But the patterns are relatively simple. I need something to take out the tedium in doing a really intricate design. A lot of the design steps are repetitive.

 

[askIllustrator]

Yes, unfortunatly, currency is painted by hand so there are no lines of symetry. If you get out a magnafing glass you can see little elements scattered throughout like a little spider in one of the 'webs' in the corner. The painting is then reduced onto the printing plates. But as for your problem. AI 10 has a lot of neat tools for reducing the tedium of original looking designs. You have the blend tool which can blend one shape gradually until in morphs into the other. I find rotating one shape after the blend makes some weird stuff happen. There's also the appearance pallete/styles. If you open some of the sample documents that came with AI and tear apart some of the sample styles you can see they pulled off some complex and random looking patterns with little to no starting elements. There's a new swatch brush (I forget the real name) that lets you use an entire group of objects like ink for your brush so you can just "paint" many randomly placed copies of your art. What really makes this stuff fun is that it is all fully editable. Sometimes just throwing somethings together can trigger some inspiration and some really cool accidents. BEHOLD! As Steve Jobs introduces us the latest in desk-lamp technology!

http://www.apple.com